Hooked on Needles

Irish Step Dancing Dress Embroidery: How-to Package

The Irish Step Dancing group that my daughter danced with is Anne O'Connell Boucher's Irish American Step Dancers who practice regularly at St. Leo's Parish auditorium in Leominster, Massachusetts. Anne's dancers do not compete, so their dresses are not what you will find at an Irish Feis or Competition or at a Celtic Dance Shop. They dance for the love of dancing, to share the Irish tradition, and to entertain all the different groups of people for whom they perform every year. The dresses that Anne's dancers wear are all handmade by moms or grandmas or aunts or friends and the embroidery is mostly done by hand by the same dedicated people.

This technique that I developed for myself over the many years that I embroidered dresses is something that many of the moms have asked me about. That is why I decided to put it together here for anyone to use. Hopefully it will be helpful to you in achieving the same results with your embroidery.

Now that I have posted information on all the stages of my method of embroidering an Irish Step Dancing dress, I can wrap it all up into a neat package so that anyone else who is interested in creating such a dress can see how it's done. Here are the steps:

Tracing the design and preparing the fabric for embroidery is covered HERE.

Preparing the stranded embroidery floss for stitching is shown in THIS VIDEO. This is a very important step and should not be skipped if you want your stitches to turn out looking their best.

Threading the needle is shown HERE. Of course if all else fails, HERE's a great tool you can use!

How to embroider the chain stitch is shown HERE.

If you would like to see some of the results of using this method to embroider on velvet, here are a few links showing finished dresses and details of the designs:

Brooke's dress
Bridget's dress
Elizabeth's dress
Katie L's dress
Katie K's dress

If you have any questions about any step in this process, or anything else you find on this site, please feel free to leave a comment for me. Comments are moderated so I see them before they get posted to the site. If you do not want your comment posted, just let me know and it will remain private.

Or you can email me at HookedOnNeedles (at) gmail (dot) com.

Happy Stitching!

Click here to return to HookedOnNeedles.com

Labels: chain stitch, embroidery, Irish Step dancing dress, separating floss, stranded floss, threading needles, velvet embroidery

How to Embroider Chain Stitch - Video Tutorial

You've seen many of the Irish Step Dancing dresses I made and hand embroidered for my daughter and many of her friends. I also shared with you my technique for embroidering on velvet using a hoop. The most recent two posts have been about how to separate embroidery floss strands and how to thread your needle. So now I am going to complete the package and show you how to actually work the chain stitch, which is what I used for all of the designs on the Irish Step Dancing dresses, except for the initials on the sleeves.

The chain stitch is a very versatile stitch which can be used as an outline, as a filling, on straight lines and around curves. It can be worked short or long and there are many varieties of the chain stitch. This is the basic chain stitch worked in very short stitches with six strands of DMC embroidery floss on velvet that has been sandwiched between a hooped piece of stabilizer fabric on the bottom and another piece of stabilizer fabric onto which the design was traced.

Here is the video. I hope you find it helpful.

If you want to see how this Celtic monogram S turned out, there are some pictures of it at the end of the post on how to embroider on velvet with a hoop. I still haven't decided how I am going to finish the piece. Perhaps frame it with a crocheted edging around it, make it into a small pillow, or applique it onto a tote bag. Oh, the possibilities!

Click here to return to HookedOnNeedles.com

Labels: chain stitch, embroidery, Irish Step dancing dress, velvet embroidery, video

Embroidering on Velvet with a Hoop

The first time I embroidered a velvet Irish Step Dancing dress, not knowing any better, I put the hoop on the fabric itself and, much to my chagrin, discovered that the hoop crushed the pile of the fabric and left permanent marks on the dress. Brooke's mom was not in the least concerned about the hoop marks. She was just glad she didn't have to do the embroidery herself! But I learned my lesson and set to work trying to come up with a way to embroider on velvet while still using a hoop.

In my previous posts about Hand Embroidered Irish Step Dancing Dresses, which can be found listed in the Hand Embroidery Links Page on the sidebar, I referred several times to my method of embroidering on velvet fabric using a hoop.

This is how I did it:

First I gathered my supplies.

For this example, I am using a leftover piece of velvet and a Celtic monogram of the letter S. I also used a hoop, straight pins, basting thread, ultra fine point Sharpie, and two pieces of Stitch N Tear Tearaway embroidery stabilizer which can be found at any fabric store.

I pinned a piece of the tearaway stabilizer fabric over the monogram so I could trace it.

Trace the design using ultra fine point Sharpie

Then I traced it using an ultra fine point Sharpie permanent marker. Even though I knew I was only going to stitch one line of the knot design, I still traced two lines so that I could more easily tell where the lines went over and under each other.

Then I pinned the tearaway stabilizer with the traced design onto the velvet fabric and basted it all around the edge.

Use embroidery hoop big enough for design

I picked out an embroidery hoop that was big enough to hold the entire design.

Hoop another piece of stabilizer and trim edges

I put the hoop onto another piece of tearaway stabilizer and neatly trimmed the edges.

Then onto the hooped stabilizer I basted the velvet fabric which already had the design basted onto it. This makes sort of a stabilizer sandwich with velvet filling. Yum! But you can see that the hoop is only on the underside piece of stabilizer, not on the velvet.

I started stitching the knot design using 6 strands of DMC embroidery floss, separated so that it would lay flat and stay smooth.

The stitching goes through all three layers: the hooped stabilizer, the velvet and the stabilizer with the design traced onto it. This shows the back of the work.

This is a detail of the knot design showing the stitches going under and over each other which is characteristic of traditional Celtic knot designs and very important to stitch correctly.

Here's the green knot line all finished. You can see the basting thread in this picture pretty clearly. When I baste the design onto the velvet, I stitch just around the outside of the design. Then when I stitch the velvet onto the hooped stabilizer, I baste closer to the outside edge and then also on the inside of the design, in this case along the shape of the S. This ensures that the stitching will be smooth and not leave any puckers in the velvet.

Here is a detail of some of the points along the knot line. When the line reaches a point and takes a sharp turn, I always anchor the last stitch at the point, then begin again in the same stitch to go in the new direction. This keeps the points of the design sharp.

This detail shows how nicely the chain stitch takes to curves.

Complete Celtic monogram S design with stabilizer still attached

Here is the complete design with the stabilizer still attached to the front and back.

This is a detail of the completed design showing the purple stitching appearing to go underneath the green. In fact, the purple stitches are anchored before the green and started again after the green.

Once the design outline is finished, remove the basting stitches and simply start tearing away the stabilizer from around the design. It's sort of like a very satisfying punch-out project, like paper doll clothes or something similar! Always start from the outside and move towards the inside when removing the stabilizer. Use a pin or sharp needle to help lift the inside sections away from the stitching being careful not to pull any of the stitch threads or the velvet.

Keep at it until all the stabilizer is removed from around and between and underneath all the stitches.

Fill in design before removing velvet from hooped stabilizer

At this point, with the top stabilizer removed and the hooped stabilizer still attached with the chain stitch embroidery, I could fill in the purple S or add some other stitching. Removing the stabilizer after filling in a shape with solid stitches is very difficult. Always do the outline of a shape, then remove the stabilizer, then do the filler stitching.

For my purposes, this design is complete, so I removed the stabilizer from the hoop and trimmed it away around the outer edges of the stitching on the back of the velvet. Leaving the stabilizer on the back gives the stitches and the velvet some extra support.

This is Katie L's step dancing dress with the design basted in place. As you can see, the dress is a little bit more daunting project than a little monogram on a scrap piece of fabric, so using a hoop is necessary in order to keep the stitches neat and even and smooth. The results are well worth the effort.

Now you know my secret for embroidering on velvet while using a hoop and without crushing the pile of the fabric! Do you have any good embroidery secrets to share?

Click here to return to HookedOnNeedles.com

Labels: chain stitch, embroidery, Irish Step dancing dress, velvet embroidery

Time to Get Organized -- Hand Embroidery

Here we go with another administrative task. This page will keep a running list of links to any posts on Hand Embroidery projects, patterns, classes, helpful hints and the like. It will be available on the sidebar of the Hooked On Needles homepage for easy reference.

Hand Embroidered Irish Step Dancing Dresses

Embroidery How-To Posts

Original Embroidery Designs